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Dismantling and Reconstructing the US Immigration System

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Dismantling and Reconstructing the US Immigration System Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency Sarah Pierce Jessica Bolter U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICY PROGRAM Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency Sarah Pierce Jessica Bolter Migration Policy Institute July 2020 Contents 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 1 A. What Has Changed?....................................................................................................................................................................1 B. Driving Reform through Layered Changes ...................................................................................................................4 C. Pushback and the Search for Alternatives .....................................................................................................................6 D. Cataloging a Period of Intense Change ..........................................................................................................................7 2 Pandemic Response ............................................................................................................................ 7 A. Travel Bans and Visa Processing ...........................................................................................................................................9 B. Border Security and Asylum Processing at the U.S.-Mexico Border ........................................................... 13 C. Interior Enforcement ............................................................................................................................................................... 16 D. The Immigration Court System ......................................................................................................................................... 19 E. Immigration Benefits ............................................................................................................................................................... 21 3 Immigration Enforcement ........................................................................................................... 24 A. Border Security ............................................................................................................................................................................ 26 B. Interior Enforcement ............................................................................................................................................................... 36 4 U.S. Department of Justice ......................................................................................................... 49 A. Instructions to Immigration Judges ............................................................................................................................... 56 B. Attorney General Referral and Review ......................................................................................................................... 60 5 Humanitarian Flows ......................................................................................................................... 63 A. Refugees .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 B. Asylum Seekers ........................................................................................................................................................................... 68 C. Unaccompanied Children .................................................................................................................................................... 77 D. Temporary Protected Status Recipients ...................................................................................................................... 82 E. Victims of Trafficking and Other Crimes ...................................................................................................................... 84 6 U.S. Department of State ............................................................................................................. 85 7 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Department of Labor ............................................................................................................................................................ 93 A. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ......................................................................................................................102 B. Immigrant Visas .........................................................................................................................................................................104 C. Nonimmigrant Visas ..............................................................................................................................................................107 D. Parole ...............................................................................................................................................................................................114 8 Other Actions ...................................................................................................................................... 116 9 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 119 About the Authors ..................................................................................................................................... 121 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................................... 122 DISMANTLING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM DISMANTLING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM 1 Introduction Into its fourth year, the administration of President Donald J. Trump has dramatically transformed the U.S. immigration system, in bold-brush, sweeping ways but also in small technical details across the immigration portfolio. After pledging to take one of the most activist agendas on immigration in modern times, the administration has delivered on nearly everything the president promised on the campaign trail, almost exclusively via executive fiat, ignoring a Congress he had originally pledged to work with on systemic reform. Lawmakers, who remained gridlocked on immigration, sat by as the administration reshaped the system in ways unseen in decades, executing—with methodical detail—a plan to drastically narrow humanitarian benefits, increase enforcement, and decrease legal immigration. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic during Trump’s fourth year in office turbocharged many of these efforts. It gave the administration an opening—in the name of public health and concern for the growing economic crisis—to finish off many of the remaining items on its agenda, including suspending the issuance of visas to certain categories of immigrants and nonimmigrants, and effectively ending asylum at the southern border. Because the Trump administration has pursued these reforms unilaterally, successor administrations could, in theory, undo each change. However, by working at a rapid-fire pace to accomplish more than 400 policy changes on immigration—as documented in this report—they may have guaranteed some longevity. It is unlikely that a future administration will have the political will and resources to undo all of these changes at anywhere near a similar pace. Thus, regardless of whether The Trump presidency will the pendulum swings in the direction of policies that have lasting effects on the U.S. favor revived immigration, the restoration of humanitarian immigration system long after protections, and more targeted enforcement, the Trump presidency will have lasting effects on the U.S. immigration his time in office. system long after his time in office. A. What Has Changed? Consistent with the president’s strong rhetoric on enforcement, the administration has considerably reduced illegal entries at the United States’ southern border and renewed efforts on interior enforcement. After advancing myriad policy options to address surging arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border unseen in more than a decade, in 2019 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instituted a combination of interlocking policies that significantly limited asylum at the border, and, jointly with increased immigration enforcement in Mexico, appeared to reduce illegal entries. These policies included a regulation making migrants ineligible for asylum if they failed to apply for it elsewhere en route to the United States, Asylum Cooperation Agreements with Central American countries allowing the United States to send asylum seekers abroad, and a ramping up of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), requiring migrants, mainly asylum seekers, to wait in Mexico for their adjudications. Together, the policy regime blocked asylum access or eligibility for the vast majority of asylum seekers. And even though southern border apprehensions MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE | 8 MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE | 1 DISMANTLING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM DISMANTLING AND RECONSTRUCTING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION SYSTEM in fiscal year (FY) 2019 hit the highest annual level in 12 years—with most
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